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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting

Originally Posted by TheOOB

I don't know why Zeful went off on some wild tangent about "Gentleman's Agreements". A D&D game is not the DM telling a story and the players acting in it, a D&D game is a group storytelling game where the PC's are the main characters. While it is true that the DM is the final arbitrator of the rules, they are not some kind of game god. Everyone, DM and player, should have a roll in the construction of the campaign and story, and a DM should never use their magical rule 0 power to put the players into line.

Here's why: Your point that I took umbrage with (this one) essentially made the distinction between good DMs and bad DMs so harsh and unforgiving that anyone trying DMing out for the first time is automatically a bad DM and the value judgement placed in that comment made it out that there was no point in playing with a bad DM, and thus no point in playing with a "new DM" either (hence the comment about a catch-22).

Essentially, your comment came across as "If you aren't already a incredible DM stop trying," which is not only reprehensible on the face of it. It's also supported by a social contract that should, on the face of it, be really easy to uphold, but has been so perverted by the mindset your comment espoused that rather than being a simple axiom is instead of a laundry list of things that are "sacrosanct" for literally no good reason.

Taking away a player's weapon is not a sign of bad DMing just like introducing something at the eleventh hour in a book isn't automatically a sign of bad writing, it's just something very easy to screw up. It has become a sign of "bad DMing" partly out of DMs screwing it up, but mostly out of the pervasiveness of high-end optimization requiring things that outright break game balance so severely that the only options are to invalidate it, or take it away from the players, and the general entitlement of the players that goes along with that.

I wasn't even going to suggest that a DM's role is somehow narratively more important than the players, like you seem to think. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to point out that your attitude and mindset aren't actually helping the community, like at all.